Shikhar Dhawan wishes Ambati Rayudu on his retirement, says ‘all the best brother’

Amid India’s scaling the heights at the Cricket World Cup 2019, one unfortunate event that unfolded was the untimely retirement call by Ambati Rayudu. The 33-year-old Hyderabad batsman, who still had a few years of cricket left in him, supposedly found it hard to accept himself getting ignored more than once for a call-up in the World Cup squad and took the step. Rayudu’s decision came a day after the injured Vijay Shankar was replaced with Mayank Agarwal even though the latter was not even in the list of reserves for the big event.

Rayudu, who had made his first-class debut in 2001 as a teenager and showed a lot of promise, could not complete even 100 games. For India, his debut came in 2013 in Zimbabwe while his final match was against Australia in Ranchi in March this year. The Hyderabad batsman was in the Indian team for a long time and was predicted to be their No.4 batsman at the World Cup. However, when the squad was announced, Vijay was picked ahead of him as the selectors felt the latter was a “three-dimensional” cricketer. Out of frustration, Rayudu said he had ordered for 3d glasses to watch the World Cup.

Ambati neither replaced Dhawan nor Vijay

Even though he was kept as a reserve player for the World Cup, he was not called either when Shikhar Dhawan was ruled out with a broken thumb or Vijay with a toe niggle. While Rishabh Pant was called up as Dhawan’s replacement, Mayank was in for Vijay, as mentioned above.

Dhawan, like some other cricketers – current and former – wished Rayudu on his post-retirement life. He even called him “brother”.

Rayudu played in 55 ODIs scoring 1,694 runs at an average of 47 with three hundreds. He has also played in six T20Is, scoring 42 runs. Rayudu has also been an established name in T20s. In 216 games that he has played, he has 4,584 runs at an average of 26 and strike-rate of 122.56. He played for Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings in the Indian Premier League (IPL) for the last couple of years and even hit a hundred. Rayudu has also quit the IPL.